Winning Post

This week in Winning Post

Yes, it's the horses' birthday on Thursday August 1, but you get the present ... a few days early.

This weekend's Winning Post is our famous calendar edition. Inside is our top-quality 28-page wall calendar featuring pictorial highlights of the season just ending and all the racedates, feature dates and big sporting events for the coming 12 months.

This edition always sells out so make sure you get to the newsagent bright and early.

Of course, you also get all the usual features of your whirlaway Winning Post, including Australia's best form coverage from Friday to Monday.

At Caulfield, spring comes early with the running of the weight-for-age Bletchingly Stakes, while at Morphettville the top youngsters battle it out in the SA Lightning.

Our form coverage kicks off on Friday with full form guides for the meetings at Mildura and Canberra, with fields, colours and tips for Ipswich and Ballina.

The metro racing this Saturday is at Caulfield in Melbourne, Rosehill in Sydney, Morphettville in Adelaide, Eagle Farm in Brisbane and Belmont in Perth.

Winning Post carries full-colour liftout guides for all those meetings plus Mildura (Vic/SA/Tas edition), Gosford (NSW edition) and Townsville (Qld edition), as well as fields, tips, ratings and/or colours for other TAB Saturday cards.

On Sunday we've got liftout formguides for four more TAB meetings plus fields, ratings, tips and colours for a stack more Sunday and Monday programs.

Don't forget Winning Post now carries trackwork reports for all four Melbourne training tracks, all three in Sydney, Morphettville in Adelaide and a general Brisbane report.

Away from the form, we've got news columns from Queensland, NSW, six Victorian districts, SA and Tasmania.

Our readers have their say on page 4, while further back in the book Shane Templeton reminisces, Paul Richards presents his unique take on the sport, Tony Kneebone brings you his Snippets column and Number Cruncher delivers the stats that matter.

Winning Post costs $5.50 and is available Thursday afternoon in selected Ballarat newsagents, the crack of dawn Friday elsewhere.

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Western Victoria: Break beckons for Bowman's boy .................................................................................................................................................

More Stories

Inside Winning Post July 27 edition you'll find liftout form guides for:

Friday:

Mildura, Canberra

Saturday:

Caulfield, Rosehill, Morphettville, Eagle Farm, Belmont, Mildura (Vic/SA/Tas edition), Gosford (NSW edition), Townsville (Qld edition)

Sunday:

Bendigo, Tamworth, Sunshine Coast, Devonport

Eye Catchers

Each week Paul Richards identifies horses from recent race meetings that he believes are ready to win. Here we update you when they are about to have their next start.

Racing.com Park Synthetic Friday - R8 N8 Triage 5th

Morphettville Parks Saturday - R3 N2 Counter Drive 4th

Royal Randwick Saturday - R3 N8 Misteed 2nd

Royal Randwick Saturday - R9 N12 Natalia 6th

Flemington Saturday - R1 N7 One More Try 6th

Flemington Saturday - R5 N8 El Questro 2nd

Flemington Saturday - R7 N5 News Girl 9th

Results

Letter of the Week

Cups and downs

The Ballarat Cup, a listed race, is now worth $500,000 while the Group 3 Geelong and Bendigo cups are worth $400,000.
All three have increased substantially in value in recent years, but needless to say the narks and naysayers have been out in force anyway.
The fact is that the Geelong and Bendigo races draw substantial benefit from their positioning on the calendar.
Don’t forget, it wasn’t all that long ago that the Bendigo Cup was run after the Flemington carnival. Had the calendar change not occurred, it would never have achieved Group 3 status.
The Geelong Cup’s position enabled it to produce the 2002, 2010 and 2011 Melbourne Cup winners.
If the Ballarat Cup was to stay in its current slot in mid to late November, it needed another boost in order to attract a decent-sized field of quality stayers. Maybe the $500,000 purse will have that effect.
A different solution could be to swap the Ballarat Cup, now over 2000 metres, with the Gold Nugget (1600m), currently run at Ballarat’s September Sunday meeting.
A 2000-metre country feature three weeks before the Cranbourne Cup makes perfect sense, even if the previous day’s Naturalism has to move.
If the Gold Nugget was a $1 million race in November and WA could be persuaded to move its carnival back a couple of weeks, it would make an ideal lead-up to the Railway.
That would allow the WA carnival to flow straight through to Perth Cup day, getting rid of the hiatus it has now. Of course, that would require interstate co-operation, which clearly is too much to ask.

Mitch Matheson
Castlemaine (Vic)